Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Alov

Alov, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich 

Born Sept. 26, 1923, in Kharkov. Soviet Russian film director and screenwriter. Honored Art Worker of the RSFSR in 1965.

Alov was graduated from the Ail-Union State Institute of Cinematography in 1951. Together with V. N. Naumov, he worked to complete Taras Shevchenko, the film begun by his teacher, the director I. A. Savchenko. In his subsequent collaboration with Naumov, Alov made films about the young fighters who grew to manhood during the revolution and civil war: Troubled Youth (1955, on themes from V. P. Beliaev’s novel Old Fortress), Pavel Korchagin (1957, after N. A. Ostrovskii’s novel How the Steel Was Tempered), and Wind (1959). They also filmed Peace to Him Who Enters, about the Great Patriotic War (1961; prize at the 22nd International Film Festival in Venice in 1961), and the television film The Coin, after the stories of A. Maltz. The films of Alov and Naumov are characterized by pathos, dramatic tension, fast-paced development of action, and generalized heroic treatment of the characters. Alov was awarded the Order of the Red Star and various medals.